City Opera Plans Different Programs for a Shrinking Season

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

Published: May 31, 2008

While its home is closed for renovations, New York City Opera will shrink its main dramatic offerings next season to one lonely opera: Samuel Barber's ''Antony and Cleopatra.'' For two performances. Unstaged.

As part of a make-the-best-of-it operation, the company will also present a concert in each of the five boroughs by its orchestra, and a hodgepodge of lectures, opera movies and panel discussions in place of the 120 or so performances it normally gives, City Opera officials said in interviews this week.

The truncated 2008-9 season is even more reduced than expected. In December company officials said they were hoping to produce four semistaged operas, with five performances each, at various halls. But that would have proved too expensive and would have created a deficit, Susan L. Baker, City Opera's board chairman, said on Friday.

''That business model just didn't really make sense in a transitional year,'' she added.

The closing of the New York State Theater for what City Opera considers vital renovations has been looming as a major challenge for the company, which is the nation's second-busiest, after the Metropolitan Opera. Its mission is to showcase American talent and interesting productions at a lower cost.

The Barber work -- which received its premiere at the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966 -- will play at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 15 and 16. The cast will include Lauren Flanigan as Cleopatra, and Tedy Tahu Rhodes, making his City Opera debut, as Antony.

City Opera will continue with its Vox showcase of new American operas, usually performed at the Skirball Center at New York University.

The company is in a bind: while it will not have to pay production costs, it must still pay its orchestra and chorus. The orchestra, under the music director George Manahan, will perform at the St. George Theater on Staten Island; Brooklyn College; Lehman College in the Bronx; LaGuardia Community College in Queens; and Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, which will have just reopened after its own renovation.

The concerts are called ''Looking Forward.'' They will feature the music of 20th-century composers, including some whose operas will be on the program in 2009-10, the first season under Gerard Mortier, City Opera's new general manager.

Mr. Manahan said he chose music that was ''spiky on purpose, not just sweet melodies.'' He said: ''It's to get the audience to appreciate the aesthetic of these beautiful pieces,'' a sort of glance ahead to ''this new world Mortier is bringing.''

Mr. Mortier has said he plans to program Messiaen's ''St. Fran?s d'Assise,'' Stravinsky's ''Rake's Progress,'' Philip Glass's ''Einstein on the Beach,'' Janacek's ''Makropulos Case,'' Britten's ''Death in Venice'' and Debussy's ''Pell? et M?sande'' the following season.

With the orchestra already paid for, there is plenty of time for rehearsal. ''I feel like we can really work in detail,'' Mr. Manahan said. ''We're not just throwing it up there fast, like a repertory house can do sometimes.'' At the same time, the concerts are important to keep the orchestra in shape, ''just like an athlete,'' he said.

Ms. Baker said the board planned a balanced budget for next year, amounting to about $32 million, or roughly 25 percent less than usual. Only a modest amount of extra fund-raising is projected, she added, and the board plans to add three or four members, and thus more committed donors.

Another risk of closing the house is losing subscribers. Mr. Mortier has spent time with groups of subscribers, and they will receive preference for next year's tickets. Subscription notices for 2009-10 will go out late this year or early next year, Ms. Baker said.

The nonmusical offerings were put together by Cori Ellison, the company's dramaturg. One series is called ''Opera Matters,'' planned in conjunction with institutions like the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Public Library and the Paley Center for Media.

''We needed to find partners, obviously, because we couldn't hold events here,'' Ms. Ellison said of the State Theater. ''We're offering programming that is squarely focused on opera and what we do and why we do it.''

The company and the Film Society will present four events at the Walter Reade Theater: two opera movies, a movie influenced by operatic form (with all three followed by lectures) and a panel discussion with film directors who have also directed operas. Ms. Ellison declined to name the movies, saying details had yet to be finished.

The Live From the NYPL series at the Public Library will devote three evenings to the ''intersection of words and music.'' Another panel will discuss opera, pop culture and mass media at the Paley Center.

Separately, City Opera will join with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for three programs about opera and African-Americans.

''If somebody has the interest and the endurance to follow us through everything we do next year,'' Ms. Baker said, ''there's 38 presentations at 14 venues in five boroughs. They're fraught with excitement about opera in general and today's environment.''

PHOTO: Gerard Mortier, the new general manager of City Opera. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ED ALCOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. B13)